


I hear the echoes of that wordless song

by qwerty



Category: Bronte - Gotye (Music Video)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They told her it was a dream, it never happened, that lonely summer at her Gran's house that she was lost in the woods and found the beasts. But she remembers it perfectly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I hear the echoes of that wordless song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anassa_anemou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anassa_anemou/gifts).



> Thanks to mikeneko who took time out of a killer schedule to clean this up for me. <3

**Andante**  
"Don't go into the woods," her Gran always told her. "It's full of wolves, and bears, and foxes, beasts with sharp teeth and glowing eyes that would love to feast on a little girl." Her Gran had bright, sharp eyes as well, that watched her keenly over the rapid click-clack of her knitting needles as her stern fingers bound the wool into orderly patterns.

But the woods she remembered had cool shadows and smells of damp earth, warm and welcoming, and beasts with gentle looks who followed her.

They told her it was a dream, that it never happened, that lonely summer at her Gran's house when she was lost in the woods and found the beasts. She was only fevered, and had never left her bed, passing the long, exhausted days there.

All summer long, every time she wanted to go out and explore and play, her Gran would tell her, "You must rest more, do you want to fall sick again?" Or, "Your friends Sharon and Alys called, they want to discuss the history project for school," and most often, "Do your homework. Have you studied?"

Gran would suggest, "Come with me, I'm going into the town," and she would abandon thoughts of the forest to go with her Gran, because there would be pretty new clothes, a nice meal at a restaurant, and lots of things to look at in the petshops with Gran, things that did not belong in the woods.

Time kept passing, and it was easy to forget about running in the woods with the beasts. 

_But she remembers it perfectly, especially in her dreams, where she runs endlessly through the breathless shadows alongside the beasts with their hooded eyes and sharp teeth, spreading her toes over cool, damp earth, kicking off rough, crackling twigs and branches, surrounded by the smells of musk and earth and green._

**Sostenuto**  
It's been years. Years that she let pass her by, the usual way time draws her out to run with people and embrace people, do human things, forgotten as always happens with these things. 

But then comes a day, when they are moving for real, and she is packing...

She has been left alone in the house, the last one there, the way she remembers that long-lost summer in her past when Gran had been sick in the hospital and a little girl had been left to her own devices, slipping out into the woods alone to explore.

She moves, takes the last boxes out to the car, and turns to look into the silent woods.

One last chance, with nobody to stop or distract her. She walks, into the deep, dark woods, away from her car and the place that was no longer home, kicks off her shoes, and runs.

Is it too late? She runs and runs, gasping in lungfuls of the forest air, of leaves and flowers and earth and animal smells.

She finds nothing, just the ragged little headdress with branches for antlers that she used to wear. There are no secrets, no beasts waiting for her to come back to them. What had she been expecting?

She finds nothing, and she falls down defeated, with no idea where to find the things she had forgotten.

Of course she has to pick herself up, eventually, brush off the damp soil and crushed leaves from her knees as she gets to her feet. She'll swipe her sleeve across her eyes and nose, suck in her breath, straighten her shoulders.

She'll walk out, calmly, like an adult, from the forest she knows so well, find her shoes and put them on, return to the car that will take her from the home she's leaving. She won't turn around, won't look back, won't search the shadows for something that was never there.

She's no longer a child, and she knew all along that she'd have to give up her childish fantasies and imaginary friends once the summer holidays ended and the days grew shorter, darker as she rejoined her friends, returned to school.

It was only a silly whim anyway, the impulse that led her running into the woods one last time before leaving, when she had passed years without thinking back to that one summer.

She's a sensible young woman, with places to go, things to do, as her dear late Gran used to tell her whenever she wanted to go out to play in the forest.

She thought of Gran telling her, "Do your homework," with her wrinkly brow all furrowed and stray grey hairs sticking up wild as her own from her tightly pinned bun.

Time to set aside childish whims and move on.

It was just odd, finding again that old thing with the stick-antlers she used to wear when she went running through the woods those long-ago summer nights. Surely it should have disintegrated by now, the branches crumbling into bits of bark and moss, the rough cloth dissolving into the mulch, buried by years of rain and mud and fallen leaves.

Just odd.

 **Poco a poco accelerando**  
The journey is uneventful, and the new apartment she would share with Sharon and Alys overlooks a nice foresty part of the park that seems to have been allowed to grow wild.

So, that night, she opens the window to let the cool night air bring in the smells of green trees and brown earth, and the singing of crickets, and whispering leaves. She falls asleep wrapped in these familiar things like a soft, much-loved blanket only just rediscovered in the garret, and it feels like she might still be at home and not in a strange bed in a strange town, waiting to confront a brave new world of terrifyingly new things when she didn't feel very brave at all.

But Alys is in the next room, arguing with her boyfriend (Alys probably thinks she's being quiet), and there's a light and soft music jarring her peace because Sharon is up late studying, as she did even when they had sleepovers. It was enough to craze over the illusion of safe familiarity she had drawn about herself, the cracks spreading and ready to chip off.. She feels so alone, and lost.

 **Con brio a niente**  
Her syncopated steps break the dual rhythms of her breaths and racing heartbeat as she crashes through branches and webs and shadows, and she kicks off the useless running shoes that always put her at risk of turning an ankle when she is running on uneven ground like this. 

She is searching the strangely familiar woods for the familiar shadows and smells she had thought would always wait for her. Hoping, hoping.

She sees...

 **Ad libitum dal segno al coda**  
And that night, lulled into peaceful and safe memories of one long-ago summer, she dreams of running into the night from a house suddenly turned hostile and unsafe, and finding four shaggy, lumbering creatures in the woods who look as startled and bemused to see her as she is to see them.

And she reaches out to them again, slowly extending her hands, palms open and up so they can snuffle her with slow, moist breaths, nosing gently at her hands like a greeting, a first meeting, and asks them, _Where did you go? Why?_

And they answer, _We never left. We were always here, with you,_ and she feels their warmth fill her heart.


End file.
